The Icarus Agenda

'I'm glad you could get up,' said the olive-skinned woman as Kendrick lurched back to the bed and the peche sheet while she closed the door. 'It confirms the doctor's diagnosis; he just left. He said you were badly banged up but the X rays showed no broken bones.'

'X rays? Where are we and who the hell are you, lady?'

'You don't remember me, then?'

'If this,' exclaimed Evan angrily, sweeping his hand over the room, 'is your modest pied-d-terre in Bahrain, I assure you I've never seen it before. It's not a place one easily forgets.'

'It's not mine,' said Khalehla, shaking her head with a trace of a smile and walking to the foot of the bed. 'It belongs to a member of the royal family, a cousin of the Emir, an elderly man with a young wife—his youngest—both of whom are in London. He's quite ill, which accounts for the medical equipment in the basement, a great deal of equipment. Rank and money have their privileges everywhere, but especially here in Bahrain. Your friend the sultan of Oman made this possible for you.'

'But someone had to make it possible for him to know what happened—for him to make it possible!'

'That was me, of course—'

'I do know you,' interrupted Kendrick, frowning. 'I just can't remember where or how.'

'I wasn't dressed like this, and we saw each other under equally unpleasant circumstances. In Masqat, in a dark, filthy alleyway that serves as a street—'

'Rot town!' cried Evan, eyes wide, head rigid. 'Slime town. El-Baz. You're the woman with the gun; you tried to kill me.'

'No, not true. I was protecting myself from four thugs, three men and a girl.'

Kendrick briefly closed his eyes. 'I remember that. A kid in cut-off khakis holding his arm.'

'He wasn't a kid,' objected Khalehla. 'He was a drug addict as stretched out as his girlfriend and they both would have killed me to pay their Arab suppliers for what they needed. I was following you, nothing more, nothing less. Information, that's my job.'

'For whom?'

'The people I work for.'

'How did you know about me?'

'That I won't answer.'

'Whom do you work for?'

'In the broad sense, an organization that seeks to find solutions for the multiple horrors of the Middle East.'

'Israeli?'

'No,' replied Khalehla calmly. 'My roots are Arab.'

'That doesn't tell me a damn thing but it sure scares me.'

'Why? Is it so impossible for an American to think we Arabs might want to find equitable solutions?'

'I've just come from the embassy in Masqat. What I saw there wasn't pretty—Arab pretty.'

'Nor to us. However, may I quote an American congressman who said on the floor of the House of Representatives that “a terrorist isn't born, he's made.”'

Astonished, Evan looked hard at the woman. 'That was the only comment I ever made for the Congressional Record. The only one.'

'You did so after a particularly vicious speech by a congressman from California who practically called for the wholesale slaughter of all Palestinians living in what he termed Eretz Israel.'

'He didn't know Eretz from Biarritz! He was a WASP grubber who thought he was losing the Jewish vote in Los Angeles. He told me that himself the day before. He mistook me for an ally thinking that I'd approve—goddamn it, he winked at me!'

'Do you still believe what you said?'

'Yes,' replied Kendrick hesitantly, as if questioning his own response. 'No one who's walked through the squalor of the refugee camps can think anything remotely normal can come out of them. But what I saw in Masqat went too far. Forget about the screaming and the wild chants, there was something ice cold, a methodical brutality that thrived on itself. Those animals were enjoying themselves.'

'The majority of those young animals never had a home. Their earliest memories are of wandering through the filth of the camps trying to find enough to eat, or clothes for their younger brothers and sisters. Only a pitiful few have any skills, even basic schooling. These things were not available to them. They were outcasts in their own land.'

'Tell that to the children of Auschwitz and Dacha!' said Evan in quiet, cold fury. 'These people are alive. They're part of the human race.'

'Checkmate, Mr. Kendrick. I have no answer, only shame.'

'I don't want your shame. I want to get out of here.'

'You're in no condition to continue what you were doing. Look at you. You're exhausted, and on top of that you've been severely damaged.'

The sheet across his waist, Kendrick supported himself on the edge of the bed. He spoke slowly. 'I had a gun, a knife and a watch among several other valuable items. I'd like them back, please.'

'I think we should discuss the situation—’

'There's nothing to discuss,' said the congressman. 'Absolutely nothing.'

'Suppose I were to tell you we've found Tony MacDonald?'

'Tony?'

'I work from Cairo. I wish I could say we were on to him months ago, perhaps years ago, but it wouldn't be true. The first inkling I had was early this morning, before daybreak in fact. He followed me in a car with no headlights—'

'On the road above the Jabal Sham?' asked Evan, interrupting.

'Yes.'

'Then you're Crawly or something like that. Cawley the—enemy, among other things.'

'My name is Khalehla, the first two syllables pronounced like the French seaport Calais; and I am indeed his enemy, but not the other things which I can easily imagine.'

'You were following me.' A statement.

'Yes.'

'Then you knew about the “escape”.'

'Again, yes.'

'Ahmat?'

'He trusts me. We go back a long time.'

'Then he must trust the people you work for.'

'I can't answer that. I said he trusts me.'

'That's a corkscrew statement—two corkscrew statements.'

'It's a corkscrew situation.'

'Where's Tony?'

'Holed up in a room at the Tylos Hotel on Government Road under the name of Strickland.'

'How did you find him?'

'Through the taxi company. On the way he stopped at a sporting goods store suspected of selling illegal weapons. He's armed… Let's say the driver was co-operative.'

'“Let's say”?'

'It'll suffice. If MacDonald makes a move, you'll be informed immediately. He's already made eleven phone calls.'

'To whom?'

'The numbers were unpublished. A man will go over to the Central Exchange in an hour or so when the calling lets up and get the names. They'll be given to you as soon as he has them and can reach an official or a public phone.'

'Thanks. I need those numbers.'

Khalehla pulled over the small rococo chair in front of the dressing table and sat down opposite Kendrick. 'Tell me what you're doing, Congressman. Let me help.'

'Why should I? You won't give me my gun or my knife or my watch—or a certain piece of clothing you've probably sold by now. You won't even tell me whom you work for.'

'As to your gun, your knife, your watch and your wallet, and a money belt with some fifty thousand American dollars, and your gold cigarette lighter, and a squashed pack of not-for-export American cigarettes—which was very foolish of you—you may have them all if you'll just convince me that what you're doing won't result in the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-six Americans in Masqat. We Arabs can't tolerate that possibility; we're despised enough for the horrible things we can't control. As to whom I work for, why should it matter to you any more than it does to your friend and my friend, Ahmat? You trust him, he trusts me. So you can trust me, too. A equals B equals C. A therefore equals C. Incidentally, your clothes have been fumigated, laundered and pressed. They're in the first closet on the left.'

Evan, perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, stared at the intense young woman, his lips slightly parted. 'That's a hell of a mouthful, lady. I'll have to think about your alphabetical logic.'